Archive for March, 2010

Well of course it has to rain sometimes or we wouldn’t be living in the middle of a million hectares of the world’s oldest rainforest. The ‘wet season’ in Cairns can stretch from the end of November until almost April, but most of the heavy rainfall is usually concentrated in January, February and March. Being as we are almost at the end of March - and our underwater camera rental business is rather weather dependent - we are looking forward with optimism!

It hasn’t been a great month, but with a bit of scattered sunshine now dancing around, and reef conditions calming down, our cameras are almost booked out for tonight. That will put the new Mercedes to the test. oops… I don;t think I had told you about that…

There must have been some significant rainfall up around Kuranda and the Atherton Tablelands over the past few days, because the waterfall at the end of our street was roaring yesterday morning when I snapped these photos…

Yes, that is the catchcry of the day on every television station this morning… “Queensland wakes up to assess the destruction left in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Ului!”

The problem is that these sensationalist newscasters fail to take into account the fact that the Queensland coastline is about 3000 kilometres long. While Cyclone Ului (now ex-Tropical Cyclone Ului) certainly did bring strong winds and heavy rain to the local region 600kilometres south of here around Airlie Beach and the Whitsundays, it is a glorious day here in Cairns, with a gentle sea breeze and barely a cloud in the sky. Hardly ‘cyclone ravaged’ as the photo below - taken from our balcony at 9:30am) shows…

It is always frustrating for Cairns businesses - particularly tourism businesses which are already doing it tough - when the southern media whips itself into such a frenzy. In effect, these news reports are discouraging tourists - especially backpackers and working holiday makers, whose schedules are very flexible - from visiting our region just because of a natural disaster in another part of our huge state. The same thing happened last year when Normanton was inundated and cut off from the rest of the country. It was terrible for Normanton, but here in Cairns - 700kilometres to the east - you would never know that Tropical North Queensland was anything but its usual holiday paradise.

Bear in mind that Queensland encompasses about 1.7million square kilometres, about two and a half times the size of the US state of Texas. If you’re struggling to get an idea of the sheer scale of our state, you might be interested to check out our ‘Tropical North Queensland driving distance map’

On a totally different subject, anyone interested in the newest addition to the Cairns Unlimited team may enjoy the photos taken by this Cairns baby photographer.